Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Surviving Tornadoes

Posted by michael on from the not-in-kansas-any-more dept.

SharkJumper writes "We here in central Oklahoma, USA are just climbing out of the wreckage of another series of tornadoes. Unlike the tornadoes of May 3rd, 1999, which killed 47 and injured more than 800, we now have much better tornado information and prediction technology. Largely because of this, there have been far fewer injuries, and (as of this morning) no reported deaths. Here in the greater Oklahoma City area, we can even register our storm shelters with the city. After a severe storm, GIS technology is used to create a map for rescuers detailing location and type of the shelter as well as emergency contact information. Rescuers can then use these maps to search for survivors that may be trapped by debris in their shelters."

5 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Get a Monolithic Dome... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    These things can survive just about anything short of a direct hit with a nuke.

  2. SKYWARN and amateur radio by KD7JZ · · Score: 3, Informative

    A program that has helped (even in the network age) to speed warnings is SKYWARN. SKYWARN is an adjunct program of the National Weather Service that trains spotters to deliver real time, on the ground, info to the NWS.

  3. know your weather patterns by Darth_brooks · · Score: 4, Informative

    Tornados have been recorded on 6 of 7 continents, and in all 50 states. If you've had a thunderstorm, you can have a tornado. Granted, they take a very specific set of conditions to form, and even then you've got no guarentees. Move to Antarctica if you want to avoid them.

    Here in SE Michigan you can get a very easy feel for what storms you can watch from the porch, and what storms you should watch from the TV in the basement. "good" storms track West to East. A high percentage of storms come off of lake michigan, track across the state, then split north or south when they hit Ann Arbor.

    (The city's a heat island. 10-ish square miles of concrete and asphault that forms a giant column of rising air that tends to split all but the biggest storms. Once the storms hit Ann Arbor, they either go north and hit Oakland county or Head south and slam Monroe. Ypsilanti, which is just west of Ann Arbor, seldom catches the full force of a storm.)

    "bad" storms are the ones that trace South to North. Theres nothing south of us (except ohio farm fields, ideal storm breeding grounds) to protect the urban areas. The worst storms I can remember have all run South - North.

    Moral of the story; know your local weather, your TV weather man is a dipshit, weather.com radar is your friend, and when in doubt, go for the basement. (if you have one, you insensitve clod)

    --
    There are some people that if they don't know, you can't tell 'em.
  4. Re:the 1999 Tornado killed because it was so huge by feed_those_kitties · · Score: 5, Informative
    The 1999 tornado in Moore Oklahoma killed so many not because there wasn't enough warning, but because it was the most powerful tornado every recorded. It was listed as an F5, the nastiest class of tornado, but many meterologists say that the F5 classification doesn't fit, because the 1999 tornado was off the scale.

    I saw somewhere that the 1999 Moore tornado had its windspeed measured with a doppler radar, and the number they came up with was one mph below F6 status. It would have been the first F6 tornado ever documented.

    It was truly a monster...

    !Sig

  5. Re:the 1999 Tornado killed because it was so huge by macdaddy · · Score: 4, Informative
    Technically speaking F5 isn't the largest tornado. Ted Fujita's scale was actually calculated through F-12, better known as Mach-I or the speed of sound (750 mph). The scale NOAA uses to categorize tornados ranges from F-0 to F-5. However an F-6 is entirely possible. A F-6 would have winds measuring 319-379 mph. It's actually believed that the Moore/Oklahoma City tornado was an F-6. However they'll never be able to prove it. The F-6 is called the "inconceivable tornado" and the "impossible tornado". It's not inconceivable or impossible that it will ever happen (or has ever happened) but that it's inconceivable and impossible by any practical measure to prove it ever happened. The F-6 damage would be masked by the damage caused by F-4 and F-5 winds around the core. The only way something like this could ever be proved is if researchers had an abundance of data and aerial views to compute the projected wind speed based on the ground swirl patterns in the debris. Most people don't realize that a tornado isn't categorized by its actual size. Many hear 1/2 mile wide and think "gee, it has to be a F-5." Not so. Tornados are classified by their wind speed. Wind speed can't be calculated at the actual time of damage (ie, they can't be taken directly from the tornado itself (yet)). Wind speed is calculated by the amount and type of damage done. For example researchers know exactly how muhc force it takes to put up a Ford Excursion and hurl it 45 yards. They know how much wind speed is takes to topple a 25-year old red oak tree in rocky soil. They know that it doesn't take much more than a stiff breeze to topple that 30-year old maple tree in moist soil (because it's soft as hell and moist soil means nutrients closer to the ground surface so you see a great deal of surface roots).

    Tornados are a bitch. People would be well advised to learn about them and learn how to protect themselves before they have to adlib.